


Due East

by sowell



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:32:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sowell/pseuds/sowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Boys on the road, post-S7. Mostly plotless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Due East

They stop for gas in California, at a dusty filling station off Highway 36. There’s an attendant, and she looks at Dean with dimples and wavy dark hair. She has a smudge of grease on her cheek, and Dean lays one arm along the window to smile up at her. Dean follows her into the shop to buy Twizzlers and a road map, and it takes Sam seven minutes of impatiently drumming his fingers on the seat before he starts to get suspicious.

He opens the restroom door to see them up against the sink, cowboy boots snug around Dean’s back, and Dean’s mouth licking deep and dirty against soft skin.

“Shit,” Sam says, and backs out quickly. In the mirror, Dean’s eyes flick to his, heavy with sex and mischief. Sam slams the door behind him.

“Please tell me you wore a condom,” Sam says in disgust, when Dean climbs back into the driver’s seat twenty minutes later, relaxed and whistling.

“I didn’t know you cared so much, Sammy,” Dean says, checking the rearview before he pulls out into the deserted road.

“I’m the one who’ll be stuck with your crazy ass if you get syphilis,” Sam says, and Dean chuckles.

“There are worse ways to go,” he says.

  
*****

  
They salt and burn the remains of a suicide victim, only to realize that it was the woman’s dead grandmother all along.

By the time they race back to town, the woman’s husband and teenage son are dead, and they’re forced to burn the corpses to make sure they don’t leave any more vengeful spirits behind. They salt and burn grandma’s bones, but not before Sam gets knocked unconscious against a granite grave marker.

Dean cleans him up by the car, Sam sitting sideways in the seat and Dean kneeling in front of him. Dean dabs his forehead with alcohol wipes and tapes a bandage against his skin tight enough to hurt. Sam’s still disoriented, and he keeps dropping his chin against his chest without meaning to, halfway between sleep and pain. Dean finally grabs his face and holds him still, blotting at him until all the blood is gone. Sam gets lost in the feeling for a few moments, woozy and boneless, propped against his brother like they’re six and ten and Dean’s wiping chocolate off his face.

“Here.” Dean shoves a bottle of whiskey into his hand, and Sam takes a clumsy swallow. He hates the burn of hard alcohol – has always hated it – but the rush of warmth is an immediate relief.

“Good?” Dean asks him, and he nods. Dean’s face has that forced-relaxed look, mouth curved to hide the anxiety in his eyes.

“I’m fine,” Sam says for emphasis, feeling dizzy and docile and weirdly content.

“I think I like you injured. Less bitchy,” Dean says with a smile, and Sam blinks at him.

“What?”

“You think I haven’t noticed you sulking for two days straight?”

“You’re making shit up again,” Sam says, studying the curve of Dean’s boot. One of the laces is fraying.

Dean makes a noncommittal noise, and Sam steps on his shoe.

“Keep your emo sneakers off my awesome boots,” Dean says, and pushes to his feet.

  
*****

  
Dean keeps him awake with loud music and shoulder shoves and, when they reach the motel room, a steady stream of banter that Sam can’t tune out.

“Hey,” Dean says. “Justin Bieber – what do you think? Deal with a demon or plain old warlock?”

“…what?”

“There’s got to be some reason people keep listening to that shit.”

“You’re an idiot,” Sam says, and rolls over. The light is hurting his eyes, and the bedspread is painfully rough against his skin. He fucking hates head injuries. Everything looks and sounds wrong for days after, and he always gets this feeling like he might start crying if someone so much as glances at him the wrong way.

“Dude,” Dean says. “Look alive. No sleeping for twelve hours. You know the drill.”

“Got it,” Sam mumbles.

“What?”

“ _Got it_ ,” Sam says with more force, but Dean is already looming over him, hand on his shoulder.

“I got it,” Sam snaps, and Dean backs off, hands raised in surrender.

“I take it back,” Dean says. “You’re even bitchier than usual.”

  
*****

  
They get lost in the desert, because Dean is convinced that a rash of disappearances has supernatural origins.

Annoyingly, he’s right, and the hydra that attacks them has seven heads and a forked tale. Luckily, it can be killed by regular weapons, but they still have a hell of a time hacking through its thick scales. Dean gets knocked around a bit, and he’s limping by the time Sam saws off the final head. It isn’t a clean job; they’re both coated in thick gore and fine-grained sand when it’s all over. Dean’s face is barely recognizable under the black-red blood covering him, and Sam figures he looks the same.

They trudge for half a mile back the way they came, Dean keeping up a steady litany of curses at nothing in particular. Sam slows by a flat cluster of rocks that looks vaguely like the face of his freshman year lit professor.

“What?” Dean asks.

“I think…” Sam turns in a circle, tilts his head back toward the sun. “I think we’re going the wrong way.”

“So you have a sense of direction all of a sudden?”

“Shut up.”

“Dude, you get lost in the mall. Let’s go.” Dean keeps limping forward, and Sam stays rooted.

“No,” he says. “No, I definitely would have remembered those rocks. We’re going the wrong way.”

“Fuck,” Dean mutters. He holds his cell phone up to the sky for the millionth time, searching for service. Sam considers telling him that they left the last cell tower somewhere over the Nevada border, but Dean doesn’t like being lectured under the best of circumstances, which this definitely is not.

Sam eyes the horizon. He guesses it’s four in the afternoon, maybe five. They have some daylight left, but once the sun starts to go down it will go down quick. Sam remembers watching it sink outside the back window of the Impala, miles of road ahead of them and his father drumming on the steering wheel.

“East,” Sam says. “We want to go east. I’m pretty sure.”

“Be more than pretty sure,” Dean says.

“I’m sure,” Sam says, with a confidence he doesn’t feel.

They turn and walk back the way they came.

  
*****

  
Half an hour later the sky is starting to go pink, and there’s still no sign of the car.

“Fuck it,” Dean says. He drops the duffel on the ground and starts rummaging. He comes up with a bottle of water and promptly splashes himself in the face with it, scrubbing at the dried blood with the corner of his t-shirt.

Sam grabs his wrist. “Quit it. We need that to drink, not take a bath.” He swipes for the bottle, and Dean yanks it back.

“I need to get snake-free or I’m gonna puke,” Dean says.

Sam almost agrees. The thick stuff is starting to rot in the heat, and Sam gets a whiff of decaying flesh every time he turns his head.

“Half a bottle,” he concedes. “The rest we save.”

They wash up the best they can, using the underside of their shirts to scrub away blood and grit. When they’re done, they’re both in jeans and boots and nothing else, their shirts reduced to sweaty, stained rags.

“Awesome,” Dean says. “Let’s keep moving.”

Sam’s a little nervous. Maybe. Just a tiny bit. Because while he’s pretty sure they’ve killed the only supernatural creature within a ten-mile radius, he and Dean aren’t exactly survivalists. Shitty diners and truck stops are their home turf, not deserted wilderness. Sam can make three different kinds of weapon using a corn husk and driftwood, but he’s never hunted for a meal in his life.

“Hey,” Dean says. “We’re gonna be fine, so stop thinking so loud.”

They walk until the sky deepens to purple. The air goes abruptly cold, and Sam feels goosebumps rise on his bare skin. He shrugs his jacket back on, even though he left his t-shirt in a heap miles ago.

“We should...”

Dean looks at him impatiently, and Sam shrugs.

“We should stop. We’re not gonna find the car. Not tonight. We need to figure out where to camp.”

Sam was hoping for a cave or shelter of some sort, but what they find is a flat bed of sandstone, elevated a foot off the ground. It’s cramped, but big enough for both of them to stretch out on if they huddle.

Lizards dart away when Dean drops their duffle, and Sam shudders.

“I’ll take first watch,” Dean says. “Get a few hours.”

Sam dreams of giant snakes, cutting through the ocean. He can hear the gentle swish of the waves, and he blinks against the salt in his eyes, trying to follow the undulating creatures. He’s absolutely certain that if he loses sight of them for a second, he’ll be attacked and killed and sent back to a bloody cage somewhere out of Dean’s reach. He follows the flick of the snake’s tail, watching water fly into the air.

He wakes, and the sound of waves is still there. He realizes after a disorienting moment that it’s the sand, skimming gently over itself. The salty sting in his eyes is real; his lids feel glued together when he tries to peel them open.

It’s still night, and Dean is asleep sitting up, head sagging forward as he breathes evenly. He’s taken off his left boot, and Sam sees how swollen his ankle is. Definitely sprained, if not worse.

“Hey.” Sam shakes his shoulder, and Dean’s eyelashes lift groggily.

“Your turn.” Sam hikes his thumb. “Get some sleep.”

Dean says something, but it’s mush to Sam’s ears. He lies down, and Sam lies next to him, rested enough to stay awake now.

He presses his back against Dean’s, feeling the way their shoulder blades touch. Ten feet away in the sand, something slithers.

Sam thinks about Dean in that gas station bathroom, thighs bare and hands pressed to the mirror, cheeks tightly hollowed with exertion. He lets himself get hard against the prison of his jeans, enjoying the feeling and doing nothing about it. He watches the shifting sand until the darkness starts to lift.

  
*****

  
They take turns sleeping and guarding until it gets too hot, and then they set out again. They drink the second half of the water, but it’s too scarce and too warm to quench Sam’s thirst.

They’re slow, accommodating Dean’s sore ankle, even if neither of them mentions it. It’s around mid-morning when Dean starts stumbling, and he finally swears and sits right down in the scorching sand. He wrenches his boot off, and Sam sees that his entire foot has gone purple, calf to toe.

“Jesus.” Sam sinks down, examining it. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“What the fuck were you going to do about it?” Dean asks moodily, but the skin around his mouth is white and pressed.

Sam cuts the sleeves of his jacket into ribbons and wraps the ankle. He amends his diagnosis to broken in at least one place. He wraps as tightly as he can without Dean punching him in the face, and then they shift unsteadily to their feet, leaning against each other.

Sam can’t remember which directions they’ve explored so far, but they continue walking anyway. East. Always east.

“This is bullshit,” Dean says. “I refuse to die of thirst. I won’t do it.”

Dean has three bags of candy stashed in the duffel. They split a jumbo bag of peanut M&Ms, candy dye melting all over their fingers and chocolate softened and misshapen from the heat. The sugar makes Sam thirstier, and he takes to licking at his lips every minute or so, just to feel the moisture.

“Stop doing that,” Dean says eventually. “You’re driving me nuts.”

“So sorry,” Sam says darkly. “I’ll just drink the rest of the water instead. Oh, wait…”

“Shove it,” Dean says. “You wanted to wash the snake guts off, too, princess.”

Sam kind of wants to trip him just to see him go face first into the sand, but he figures that’s a little mean, what with the broken ankle and everything.

The sun hits its pinnacle and starts waning again, the hours dragging into the late afternoon. Sam’s feet get heavier, and he really does trip at one point, sprawling forward. To Dean’s credit, he checks Sam over for injuries first,  _then_  starts mocking.

  
*****

  
They have to camp another night. This time they don’t manage to find a flat bed. They stop at a small cluster of jagged stone, desert brush poking through every nook. Sam curls up in three different positions in an attempt to get comfortable, and he finally gives up and dozes upright against the bumpy surface. He has no dreams, and when Dean shoves him awake with a booted foot, Sam feels anything but rested.

He mentally quizzes himself to keep himself awake while Dean sleeps. Five ways to ward off a vengeful spirit. Three different incantations to exorcise a demon. The names of all thirty-seven hunter-friendly bars east of the Mississippi. He lets himself consider, for the first time, that they might actually die out in the desert. Maybe it’s the heat eating his brain, but the thought is…sort of peaceful. Okay, so he was hoping for a slightly better ending, but really? They’re together and only in a moderate amount of pain and neither of them will end up in Hell this time. Probably.

Dean’s body is forming a living mattress, softening the pointy edges of their little stone oasis, and Sam is past caring about personal space. He curls himself in beside Dean, letting his own cheek dig into Dean’s scratchy hair.

“No wandering hands,” Dean grumbles without opening his eyes, and Sam smiles.

  
*****

  
They drag themselves up in the morning, but they’re both hollow-eyed and sluggish. Sam re-wraps Dean’s foot, and they set off. Sam takes a final glance back to make sure they haven’t left anything behind, and then he stops short.

“What?” Dean asks, squinting in the sun.

“Prof Daniels,” Sam says dumbly.

“Excuse me?”

“Looks just like him.” The rocks form a nose and a sunken mouth, and Sam shakes his head to make sure he’s not seeing things. “We’ve been here before. This is…”

“Great,” Dean says. “So we walked in a goddamn circle. Perfect.”

“No. No wait,” Sam says. He looks up at the sun, then back at the rocks. “East,” he says. “We went the wrong way before. We should…” He spins, searching for his sense of direction. It’s the same rock formation from before, but the sun is on the wrong side. How could he have missed it last night?

“Dude?” Dean says.

“This way,” Sam says. “Definitely this way.”

“Last time you said  _not_  to go that way.”

“This time I’m sure,” Sam says, even though he’s not.

Dean raises his eyes heavenward in an age-old expression of condescension and exasperation and extreme brotherly patience. “Fine. Lead the way, Cousteau.”

They walk for ten scant minutes before Sam sees the horizon shift subtly.

“I think…it’s…” Sam blinks, and the Impala takes shape, distant and shimmering in the sun.

Dean catches sight of it at the same time, eyes widening. “Holy shit.”

Sam grins, wide and happy, and he can almost understand Dean’s devotion to all things automotive in that moment. The Impala looks like a black metal palace, home and safety and sleep and freedom.

“And you wonder why I never let you drive,” Dean says, but he’s too relieved to put any sting into the words. “What do you think?” he asks. “Half a mile? Three quarters?”

“Who cares?” Sam says. “Let’s just get there.”

They walk until Dean falters, grabbing at Sam’s shoulder before he pitches over. “Motherfucker,” he says through clenched teeth.

“Hey.” Sam kneels down, curves forward. “Get on.”

Dean recoils. “No friggin’ way.”

“Come on,” Sam says impatiently. “We have half a mile to go and you can barely crawl. Don’t be macho.”

“You’re not carrying me,” Dean says flatly.

Sam looks down pointedly. Dean’s holding his left foot off the ground like a crane, balancing on his right. Even through the bulky bandage, Sam can see how the foot is pointed wrong, hanging and useless. He can almost feel the throb under his skin.

“Fine, then give me the keys. I’ll go get the car and drive back to pick you up.”

Dean snorts. “After you got us lost for two days? Yeah, I don’t think so. I’d die out here first.”

“Well?” Sam hikes his head, and Dean sighs.

Dean’s too fucking heavy to carry anywhere, but Sam has adrenaline going for him. There’s water in the trunk, and food and clean clothes and a cold pack for Dean’s ankle.

“You reek,” Dean says into the back of his neck.

“I think we both do.”

“Nonsense. I smell like a flower,” Dean says, and Sam bites down on his laughter. Dean is solid and desert-hot against his back.

The Impala gleams in the distance.

  
*****

  
They fuck in South Dakota, and it’s the first time, even though it’s hardly a surprise to either of them. Sam has aimed clumsy kisses at Dean before, drunk or delirious, and during a few of the really bad moments, Sam has felt Dean’s mouth on his skin, an echo of his tight, grasping arms.

They really go at each other in the far corner of an old junkyard, not because they’re dying or desperate, but because Dean is stupid and stubborn and makes Sam want to throttle him sometimes.

Bobby’s ashes are scattered along the interstate, mixed with tears and cheap whiskey and the engine grease from Dean’s hands. Dean’s commemoration had ended there, but Sam had quietly paid for a headstone to be erected in a cemetery twenty miles south of Bobby’s salvage yard. He’d had Bobby’s name and dates inscribed on it, and nothing else, because what was there to say?  _Father_  is a lie and  _friend_  is inadequate and Bobby would have hated that Sam wasted any time thinking about it at all.

Sam directs Dean to the place under the guise of searching for a Stanford acquaintance. Dean stops short when he sees the marker, turns and looks at Sam through eyes gone dark with shock and grief. He turns and walks back to the car.

Sam stays, and talks, even though he’s still a little fuzzy on the details of the afterlife. He’s not sure Bobby can hear him now that his spirit is really and truly gone. He talks anyway, about Dean and hunting and the shitty weather and the way they haven’t found another friend since Bobby burned up – not really.

When he walks back to the car, Dean is slouched in the driver’s seat, music blaring and sunglasses on and hands trembling ever so slightly on the wheel.

“Happy?” Dean asks tightly, and Sam sighs.

“I just thought maybe – ”

“Well don’t,” Dean cuts him off.

They drive for thirty minutes before Sam tries to broach the subject again. Dean pulls them off the road with a violent wrench of the wheel.

“I can’t,” he says. “Not this. Not now.”

He stalks away from the car, through the maze of abandoned scrap metal and wire. Sam chases after him, overtaking him with longer legs and a determined stride, and he watches as Dean paces, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Look,” Sam says. “I’m not trying to upset you. I know it’s not your thing. But after Bobby, I just…I needed….” Sam shakes his head, words eluding him. “I thought he deserved it.”

“Yeah,” Dean snaps. “Because he was so big on tradition. Regular Martha Stewart.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Sam responds, anger starting to prick at him. His joints itch. “I didn’t ask you to be a part of it.”

“No, you just dragged me here.”

“Just to see,” Sam says, placating. “Just so you would know.”

“Great, thanks.” Dean laughs, dark and bitter, and Sam throws his hands up.

“You know, I don’t know why I bother. You’ve been like this our whole lives. You and Dad. The world won’t end if you take two seconds to grieve.”

He regrets mentioning Dad the second the words are out of his mouth, but by then it’s too late. Dean’s face shuts down, a solid blank.

“Maybe I’m just sick of grieving,” he says, silky and controlled.

Sam grabs at him as he goes to walk away, and then they’re shoving, rough angry hands and clenched teeth. Dean has never understood Sam, never said the right thing, never let his fucking guard down long enough to just be honest, just be human…

Sam’s back scrapes against a flayed bumper, and blood blooms sticky against his shirt. Sam twists around to assess the damage, and Dean’s fist catches him on the jaw, a little too hard. Sam goes down in a lump.

For a second Dean just stands over him, fists clenched and breathing hard. Then his eyes catch on the blood-streaked steel, and he’s dropping down, pulling Sam’s shirt up to look.

“Jesus, I’m sorry Sammy,” he says, prodding.

The scrape is nothing, Sam can tell. Bloody, but shallow. The whack to his jaw hurts more, and the edges of his vision are tipsy.

He grabs at Dean’s shirt. “Don’t shut me out, man,” he says tiredly. “It’s hard enough with you.”

Dean won’t look at him, brushing his fingers over Sam’s skin in a repetitive motion, eyes fixed determinedly down.

Sam leans forward and kisses him, right on the mouth, hard and open and painful. It’s not the first time, but it’s the first time Dean doesn’t even try to fight it. He just tilts his head and lets Sam kiss him, eyes falling shut.

They fuck in the dirt, face-to-face and Sam sucking at Dean’s throat like he might be able to draw out some of Dean’s brokenness. Dean’s crying a little, but in that stony-faced way that says he barely even notices it. His fingers bunch in Sam’s skin, and Sam’s hair sways against his face.

They stick together afterward, skin on skin wherever they’ve managed to shrug out of their clothes. Dean’s fingers trail paths over his back and always pause at the dip in his spine where Jake’s knife cut clean through.

They don’t look at each other for a week straight, until Dean gets them thrown out of a motel for sleeping with the night manager’s wife. They sprint for the Impala, Dean tripping as he fruitlessly tries to hold his jeans up around his hips. Sam laughs so hard he can barely breathe, and by the time they hit the interstate, Dean is laughing too.

  
*****

  
Dean dies in Iowa, or at least that’s what the paramedics tell Sam. Legally dead for two minutes before they shock oxygen and life back into him. Sam watches from behind a cage of law enforcement, all his nerves frozen until he sees Dean convulse and cough, fingers weakly grasping.

He wants to ride in the ambulance, but he knows Dean will kill him if he leaves the Impala behind, so he follows the siren, sandwiched between flashing lights in front and a police escort behind. Sam tells them that the neurotoxin is from a black widow bite, which is almost the truth.

“Big spider,” the doctor says skeptically, peering at the marks where the vetala’s fangs had sunk into Dean.

“You have no idea,” says Sam.

The police try to catch him up in a lie, but since they can’t seem to come up with any motive or means for Sam’s purported fratricide attempt, they eventually leave him in peace by Dean’s bedside.

The poison fucks with Dean’s heart enough to force them into a two-week vacation. They hole up in a motel with shag carpet and mirrors on the ceiling, and Dean makes the requisite tired 70’s porno jokes.

A sick Dean is a cranky Dean, and Sam spends most of his waking hours in the motel’s lobby, mooching off the free wi-fi and looking for their next job. He finds some signs of a haunting at a post office in Ohio, so he starts making preparations.

He and Dean spar together like they haven’t since they were teenagers, and Sam enjoys the feeling of an easy win while Dean is still weak with fatigue. He figures it’s payback for all those years when Dean was older and faster and put Sam down with a gleeful smile on his face every time.

When Dean finally puts up a real fight again, Sam knows it’s almost time to move on, and he tries to be happy about it.

  
*****

  
Ohio turns out to be a demon, not a haunting, and he and Dean don’t manage to save the poor clerk being possessed. She bleeds out on the floor in front of them, and Sam flashes back to the father and son in California, their slit throats black and gaping. Every year it seems like they save fewer people, or maybe the combined weight of all the death on their shoulders just makes it seem so.

Dean’s face is bleak as he stares at the girl, another personal failure in his mind. Sam tries to offer some consolation, but Dean brushes it off. Rinse and repeat.

Sam doesn’t say what he wants to, which is:  _Dad was wrong. You are not responsible for the whole world. People died before us and people will die after we’re gone, and haven’t we given enough?_

They leave town that night, silence between them.

  
*****

  
Massachusetts is hot in the summer, which surprises Sam. New England is supposed to be the land of maple syrup and turtleneck sweaters, but instead he finds himself pounding angrily against the broken air conditioner in their sweltering hotel room.

Salem is a bust, but Manchester has an honest-to-god coven of witches. To their credit, they’re legitimately surprised to learn the friendly earth spirit they’ve been summoning is actually a people-eating demigod. He and Dean take it out with a pine stake and a blowtorch, and they narrowly avoid burning down a suburban neighborhood in the process.

Dean joins him in the shower that night, and Sam is so surprised that he stands there mutely until shampoo drips into his eyes.

“Close your mouth. You look like a fish,” Dean says, and dips his head under the spray. They both smell like a barbeque pit, and part of Sam’s hair has been singed away.

Sam knows Dean’s body as well as he knows his own, but seeing Dean naked and wet in front of him is new and strange and almost excruciatingly embarrassing. Sam keeps his eyes up and tries to ignore the heat on his cheeks.

“Am I offending your delicate constitution?” Dean asks, smirking, and Sam chokes on a mouthful of water.

They don’t do anything except jerk each other off, and it feels like a celebration. They’re both alive and mostly sane and no one died this week except a demigod with three heads and some serious anger issues.

“Hey,” Dean says before they turn out the lights. “Tomorrow, let’s go to the beach.”

It’s been years since Sam’s seen any body of water bigger than a swamp. “I guess,” he says. He can already feel the pull of California, the edges of the country a magnetic force and he and Dean an ever-swinging pendulum.

“Wear sunblock this time,” Sam says. “I don’t want to hear you bitching about sunburn.”

“You love it,” Dean says, and in that moment, he’s kind of right.


End file.
